RSVPMaker now allows you to include upcoming event listings in email newsletters distributed using MailPoet, the plugin and email sending service recently purchased by Automattic, the company behind WordPress. You can also have people who register for your events sign up for your email list at the same time by including the Mailing Lists Checkbox block in your RSVP form.
Update: MailPoet can also improve the delivery of RSVP confirmation messages and other transactional messages (see below).
For the benefit of interested developers, I’ve included some technical details about the integration at the end of this post.
Test it from the subscriber’s point of view by signing up at RSVPMaker’s MailPoet List Demo page. (The official RSVPMaker list remains a MailChimp list, at least for now).
MailPoet is free for lists of up to 1,000 providers and a less expensive than MailChimp for large lists. Although RSVPMaker includes is own email utilities, including the ability to construct newsletters for distribution through MailChimp, I wouldn’t claim it rivals the design tools MailPoet provides.
To add RSVPMaker event listings in a newsletter, add one of the RSVPMaker shortcodes to a text block, using the custom:prefix. In other words, rsvpmaker_upcoming becomes [custom:rsvpmaker_upcoming]. (Although I’ve put more emphasis on Gutenberg blocks lately, most have shortcode equivalents).
The default RSVP event registration form that comes with RSVPMaker was designed for in-person events, with space for registrants to provide a phone number and add the names of guests. When you are instead registering people for online events (the most common case in 2020), collecting a phone number may not be appropriate, and guest registration is probably irrelevant.
The latest RSVPMaker release makes it easier to switch between alternate RSVP Forms. I’ve provided one for webinars, which you can modify as needed, and you can create more.
Switch between RSVP Forms
When working with an event or event template, you can either switch to using one of the alternate forms (shared between all events that use it) or create a copy that you can customize.
This is similar to how you can either edit the default RSVP Form or create a customized copy of it.
There’s now an option to choose either the default form or one of the alternatives when you create a new event or event template.
You can edit the available forms, or create new ones, on the RSVP Forms tab of the RSVPMaker Settings screen.
RSVP Forms tab in Settings Screen
You can modify the webinar form I’ve provided, which by default asks for first name, last name, and email, with a prompt to allow you to add the registrant to your email list (which can be automatic if you’re using RSVPMaker’s MailChimp integration).
Or you can create a new reusable form from scratch.
At the bottom of the RSVP Forms tab, you’ll see a listing of custom forms previously created for specific events. To make any of these forms reusable, you assign it a name that should be displayed on the menu.
RSVPMaker users can also manage forms by associating them with an event template for a given type of event, which can also include customized confirmation messages and settings shared across events based on that template. However, allowing RSVP Forms to be managed independently should help with scenarios where you want to collect a similar set of data for multiple types of events.
RSVPMaker now offers a countdown timer block. You can embed it in an event, and it will show the countdown to the start time for that event. Or add it to a post or page (for example, a blog post highlighting how quickly the event is approaching) and specify which event you’re targeting.
You can see an example of how it works when embedded in an event below.
Sign up early for our best Toastmasters district conference ever! Our keynote speaker will be former President Barack Obama, with a presentation on how to use “Um’s” and “Ah’s” to make yourself sound thoughtful.
The educational seminar program is going to be dynamite, and you will not want to miss our district-level Table Topics and International Speech contest competitions.
Early bird pricing will be available until September 1, 2020, so register today for the best deal.
RSVPMaker provides some basic styling for the countdown timer, which you can modify to fit your preferences using, for example, the WordPress Customize tool. Here’s an example.
CSS classes you can target include:
countdowndigits: the digits included in the display
countdowndigits-line: the whole line of content
countdowndays, countdownhours, countdownminutes, countdownseconds: the components of the time
countdownspacer: wraps around the colon between hour, minutes, and seconds
countdowndayslabel: the label “days” that appears between the days and hours
You can also specify what should be displayed after the countdown has expired (the scheduled start time of the event is past). The choices are a “stopped clock” like 00:00:00, the stopped clock plus a message, or just the message you provide. If you don’t want anything displayed, select “none.”
If a message is displayed, it will be a paragraph with the class “countdown_expiration_message” as a target for any CSS.
This is a demo of how to do event marketing in RSVPMaker for WordPress, showing an updated user interface for setting event dates and times.
https://youtu.be/NmwN1T9s44E
Demo of RSVPMaker, WordPress plugin for event marketing
The drop-down lists for year, month, day, and time are gone, replaced with simple text entry blanks. You can type in “January 1, 2021 7 PM” or “6 March 2021 8:30 am” or any other clear date and time. If you prefer, use the numeric format “2021-02-28 09:30:00.” That’s what actually gets recorded to the database.
If you enter the date as text, you will see the numeric equivalent and vice versa.
This change is based on usability research I’ve been reading that argues against excessive use of drop-downs. I personally found it to be inefficient when creating multiple events.
Setting the date and time in RSVPMaker
A simpler user interface lets you focus on event marketing, like copy and images that tell people why they should attend.
I’ve added the ability to change dates and times using the Quick Edit feature of WordPress post listings.
RSVPMaker Quick Edit (date and time settings magnified)
In addition, a new multi-event setup screen is handy for things like creating RSVPMaker event posts representing all the sessions and activities in a conference program.
RSVPMaker Schedule example
The demo covers the use of the RSVPMaker Schedule block, which was intended for applications like conference schedules. Used in combination with the Show in my timezone button, it allows people to convert times to their own local timezone — particularly handy for online events. See the sample conference schedule example from the demo.
When you hold a seminar or conference online, you make it available to the world — and even if you were compelled to take it online by COVID-19, you ought to take advantage of that fact. That means attracting people from many timezones, not just the timezone the organizers happen to be located in. Yet even many professional events, fail to make this easy — expecting people to be able to do the mental math to calculate the difference from EST to PST to GMT and beyond.
With RSVPMaker’s Show in my timezone button, the computer can do the math for them. Recent enhancements allow you to use it in a broader variety of situations.
This event is advertised in U.S. Eastern time, but viewers can see the entire schedule translated into their own local timezone.
The example here is from VTM CON on Dec. 5, 2020, a conference for speakers and leaders I’m helping publicize. I was a founder of Online Presenters Toastmasters, one of the sponsors, which has been using the Show in my timezone button on its event notices for years, but in this case we wanted to show the entire schedule of events for the conference in a table. The times for EST, PST, and UTC were entered by hand, but we wanted to make the listing equally accessible to people in other timezones.
You can see it liveand register for the event. If you attend, be sure to say hello.
For the VTM CON example, I’ve added the CSS class tz-table2 to the an HTML table created with the WordPress block editor. This tells my script the data to be converted is in the second column of the table. The available classes are tz-table1, tz-table2, and tz-table3 for the first second and third columns of a table.
You can also apply tz-convert to a table or another container block such as a paragraph, heading, div, or span element. When tz-convert is applied to a table, the script searches for any content formatted like a time (either 1:00 PM or 13:00). The data to be converted should be the only content in the table cell or other container targeted.
In the WordPress editor, you can add a class to any block of content by selecting Advanced in the sidebar panel for that block type.
Adding a class to a table
Using tz-convert for my table would be fine if it only contained times in EST, but in my example it would also mess with the times given for PST and UTC. Using tz-table2 avoids that issue.
For those interested in the technical details, I’ve provided an HTML / JavaScript example at the end of this post that could be used outside of WordPress or RSVPMaker.
Timezone Conversion for the RSVPMaker Schedule Block
Timezone conversion for the RSVPMaker Schedule block
The timezone conversion feature also works with the RSVPMaker Schedule listing, which was introduced several versions ago as an alternative to the RSVPMaker Upcoming schedule listing.
Here, the idea is that each session of the conference has been modeled as its own RSVPMaker event. The RSVPMaker Schedule block includes options that allow you to limit the listing by start and end date and by the RSVPMaker Event Type (similar to a category for a blog post).
Rather than showing the full date and time at the start of each post, RSVPMaker shows the date just once for each event falling on that date, followed by the start time, the event title, and the content of the event. Within each event post, you can use the more tag to specify content that should only be displayed if the user clicks Read More — making the schedule easier for the viewer to scan quickly.
RSVPMaker Schedule block settings
The tz-convert tag is automatically added to the times in an RSVPMaker Schedule display, so that’s a detail you don’t have to worry about. Just toggle on Display “Show in my timezone” in the block settings to activate this feature.
If you’re a user of the software, but not a programmer, you can stop reading now. The next section is just for other coders.
HTML/JavaScript Code Example
Here is a working example of my timezone table example with some of the complexities specific to my plugin stripped away. JavaScript knows the viewer’s timezone as long as that person’s computer clock is set correctly, so there is no need to ask for it.
The script takes advantage of the fact that JavaScript can also parse a datetime string that includes a timezone into a universal timestamp, representing it in memory as in integer. When you then as the script to display the time, it shows it relative to the user’s own timezone.
Most of the necessary information, such as the original datetime and timezone, is included as attributes on the Show in my timezone button. The rest of the script uses JQuery selectors to target the HTML classes I’ve designated for data that can be converted.
The code sample is not identical to the code used in RSVPMaker, which includes PHP to pull dates, times, and other data from the the WordPress database. Complete code is on Github at https://github.com/davidfcarr/rsvpmaker
RSVPMaker is back online in the WordPress repository, following a fix to one potentially serious security issues and the implementation of other updates required by the wordpress.org plugins review team. Please update ASAP if you are running a version earlier than 7.8.5.
RSVPMaker has been temporarily removed from the wordpress.org repository because of a SQL Injection vulnerability in some old code. I have provided a patch, which the powers that be are reviewing. Meanwhile, I’ve made it available here [link removed].
I apologize for this potentially serious error.
Updates should be available through the plugin repository again soon.
If you’re running WordPress 5.5, it’s now possible to update a plugin using a ZIP file. The system will tell you there is already an existing plugin directory for RSVPMaker then prompt you to confirm that you want to update to the uploaded version.
RSVPMaker uses the black admin bar that appears at the top of the page when you are logged in to provide links to related documents and settings screens.
Because the WordPress full screen (distraction free) editor prevents the display of that menu, it’s now disabled by default when you are editing RSVPMaker posts. This navigation is important to allow you to navigate from an event post for a specific date to the event template it was based on. Recent releases have made it easier to see whether the registration form and the confirmation message are specific to the event you are looking at, as opposed to being the default version from your settings, or a version inherited from the event template.
The New option you click on for a new p0st or page lets you create an individual RSVP Event, a New Event Template, or Create/Update events based on a template you’ve defined.
Here are some of those variations.
If an event currently uses the default confirmation message for your site, you can click on the Confirmation Message (Default) link to edit the default version. Alternatively, you can click on the Customize link to create a version specific to this one event.In this example, the messages have been inherited from a template. The form is the default (meaning the template also references the default version).In this example, the confirmation and reminder messages as well as the form have all been customized. You can tell because even though it’s based on a template, there are no links prompting you to customize those items.
These options appear under the Edit RSVP Event menu when you are viewing an event on the public site. When you are in the edit, working with event content, these links appear with RSVP / Event Options as the top level menu item.
When you are editing a message or form related to an event, the menu changes again to provide links back to Edit Event and View Event, along with the submenu options.
Links from a form to its parent event.
Finally, here are the new improved options under the New menu. Create / Update links will be provided for any templates you have defined.
New event, versus new template, or Create / Update a series of events based on a template.
If you run a website for a community of people who would like to be able to post events occasionally — but not often enough that you need to provide them with an author or contributor password — you can allow them to submit events for review by your website’s team of editors.
An example is shown below. This form can be added to any post or page using the RSVPMaker Event Submission editor block or the [rsvpmaker_submission] shortcode. For security reasons, event descriptions are limited to bold, italic, and link formatting. Any other HTML or script code is filtered out.
When a website visitor completes the form, an email notification is sent to the list of people you specify (either in your default settings or the block settings). RSVPMaker event posts are saved as drafts but not published until a website editor approves them.
Optionally, you can prompt users to include a timezone in addition to date and time. This is important for online events and events across many geographies, but not necessary for a website advertising local community events.
You can try the user experience here.
Here is what the block looks like in the editor.
RSVPMaker Event Submission editor block
My experience from running community websites is that I'd rather give people a password if they are posting events regularly, partly because I want them to be able to make updates when event details change.
On the other hand, plenty of people who might have something good to share are reluctant to accept the burden of having to remember another password -- and I can't blame them. This is a way of encouraging more participation and building a more complete calendar for whatever community you serve.
Update: Release 7.7.5 adds support for Google reCAPTCHA to combat form spam. The reCAPTCHA credentials must be entered on the RSVPMaker Settings screen.
There are now 2 different confirmation messages you can configure in RSVPMaker, one for the initial registration and the other displayed only after payment when you are charging for an event. One scenario: you’re charging for an online class or webinar and do not want to share the link until after payment is collected.
You can test it right now by signing up for the Google Photos workshop my friend and client Chris Guld is taking registrations for.
Setting the Payment Confirmation options.
By default, RSVPMaker sends a confirmation email message immediately after an event registration is recorded. However, you can now change that to say the confirmation email should only be sent after payment is confirmed.
One of the new editor blocks available in RSVPMaker is RSVPMaker Schedule, an alternative to the calendar-style presentation meant to let you display a series of related events such as sessions within a conference program.
WordPress enthusiasts might consider this as a way of sharing a WordCamp event schedule.
The setup for the conference schedule demo is that there is one RSVPMaker event post that serves as the registration page for the entire weekend event. Each conference session is then modeled as its own RSVPMaker event. As displayed within the RSVPMaker Schedule listing, the sessions of the individual presenters are grouped by day, with the time that they are speaking shown as part of the session headline.
